Stephen Fry, Sex And Women

I recently wrote of the bear pit into which habitual ‘Twitterers’ can fall, and today the British newspapers are full of writer and broadcaster, Stephen Fry’s Twitter comments about women and sexuality. To continue with elucidations to the natural World, Fry has stirred a veritable hornet’s nest, with his claim that women “don’t really enjoy sex”, and merely indulge in it in order to ensnare those poor saps who are heterosexual and male. He initially made some of his outspoken claims in a magazine article, but appears to have used Twitter to justify them – and in the process opened himself up to yet more criticism.

Stephen Fry raised the curtain when he said that men secretly felt 'they disgust women' as they 'find it difficult to believe that females are as interested in sex as they are'.

He continued: 'If women liked sex as much as men there would be straight cruising areas in the way there are gay cruising areas.'

Fry said that the only women who accepted being promiscuous were prostitutes and that was because they receive payment.

'Women would go and hang around in churchyards thinking: ''God, I've got to get my f*****g rocks off'', or they'd go to Hampstead Heath and meet strangers to s**g behind a bush,' he told the November issue of gay magazine Attitude.

'It doesn't happen. Why? Because the only women you can have sex with like that wish to be paid for it.'

Fry, who is in a relationship with 25-year-old actor Steven Webb, claimed that sex is 'the price women pay' to be in a relationship.

He said: 'I feel sorry for straight men. The only reason women will have sex with them is that the sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man, which is what they want.’

Well, Stephen Fry is of course entitled to his views, and perhaps being generous he has been quoted out of context. But, and here is the big ‘but’, there are many out there, and not just men, who find his views way off beam, and actually verging on the bigoted. Imagine if a heterosexual women had written in such generalized terms about gay attitudes to sex, parading a bunch of stereotypes in the process? Imagine the outcry!

Is there are any truth to Fry’s claims? Well, it may well be the case that some women, as with some men don’t really like sex at all, or perhaps they used to like sex but not anymore. It may also be the case that some women do use sex to attract and keep a man, but who can blame them for that? But the idea that most women don’t enjoy sex is utterly ludicrous. It’s just that a large number of women prefer something more than just the sex act itself. And frankly the idea that any man or woman would prefer to hang around bushes in darkened, damp, parks in order to get a quick thrill, eludes me.

But maybe I am missing something..

In the meantime, Stephen Fry fans are worried that the writer and broadcaster has been so seared by the public uproar, that he will this time carry out his threat to abandon Twitter altogether. His final words, “bye – bye”, indicating to them that that is, er, it.

Even the optimists among us would have to admit 2018 was a challenging year. The fractured world that became the focus of our 2018 Annual Meeting a year ago came under further pressure from populist rhetoric and rising nationalist agendas. At the same time, the urgent need for coordinated global action in areas such as climate change, inequality and the impact of automation on jobs became more intense.